Baseball Cards

I want to talk about baseball cards this week, as strange as that sounds. I have an acquaintance who was offering to help me with my consulting practice. She is a smart and accomplished person, so I was interested in her help and guidance. We would talk about some ideas and I would send her information I had thought might be useful to her. However, she would not respond to my emails. This happened a number of times, so it was a repeated pattern. I was looking for a way to interact more effectively with her. That’s when I read about Baseball Cards in Ray Dalio’s fantastic book “Principles”. I have spoken about this book in previous newsletters. Dalio describes his Baseball Cards as: “This led me to one of my most valuable management tools: Baseball Cards… Just as a baseball card compiles the relevant data on a baseball player, helping fans know what that player was good and bad at, I decided that it would be similarly helpful for us to have cards for all of our players at Bridgewater.” In other words, someone’s past performance is the best indicator of future performance. Then I realized: If I was to make a “baseball card” for my consulting acquaintance, it would show that she did not respond to emails and that was not a good collaborator in these situations. In this context, she was not a “player” who could help me advance my situation, regardless of my approach. She is a great person, but not a strong player in this regard. So, I decided to not pursue collaboration on consulting projects with this acquaintance, and spend my time on more profitable avenues. I realized her “baseball card” told me all I needed to know.

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My main learning from this line of thinking is that the Baseball Card concept is useful in determining who can be real players in our efforts to build great processes. The best process builders/players (with the strongest baseball cards) are enthusiastic about building strong and robust manufacturing processes and will do “whatever it takes” to move things forward.

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YOUR CHALLENGE THIS WEEK

Please think about the key process experts and others in your organization and what their “baseball cards” might reveal…

• What process expert has the strongest baseball card? Have you asked them what new and innovative processes they can deliver to the organization?

• What management supporter has a baseball card that shows they can champion the creation of robust manufacturing processes? Can they be enlisted to accelerate a current project?

I’d enjoy hearing about how you might think about and apply “baseball cards” to your situation. As always, please email me and I’ll get back to you promptly.

All the Best, Marty

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